A contract was signed this morning for the extension to the Corozal Community Hospital. The addition to the building is expected to offer space for better health services that have been on demand in the northern district.

CEO in the Ministry of Health, Dr. Peter Allen, explains the project is part of rolling-out of the National Health Insurance.

” The initial extensions to the Corozal Clinic were very good but we have a vision for really an atrium, an open space where there is lots of light and a place where people can come and feel much more comfortable about receiving their healthcare services and of course also focus on staying healthy and staying well and so we’ve gone out to tender some months ago and the winning contractor is Mr. Castillo I think he resides in Belize City and he was with us today to sign the first phase of half a million dollars for the extension to the primary care provider poly clinic in Corozal adjacent to the hospital. The total cost of the extension wil be a little less than a million dollars and will also include additional space for conference rooms, breast feeding, a small space for the nursery, a children’s play area and of course opportunities to provide health promotion and health education messages to our clients while they are waiting to be seen.

Dr. Allen added that by the end of September, the Ministry of Health should have competed a new surgical theater at Corozal Community Hospital. He explained that the state of the art facility is as a result of public demand.

“As we see the population growing and our services evolving the demand for services has grown and continues to grow more and more and reflective not just by an increased need but also an increased confidence in the service that is offered through the public sector and so we see that the waiting lists for the operating theaters in Orange Walk has grown and so Corozal becomes the first of the district hospitals, the community hospitals to put in place its own operating suite and so we anticipate that this will be in the first stages for elective surgeries if you are non-emergency surgeries and we hope we’ll be able to drastically reduce the waiting times for surgeries like simply hernias where obviously its something that is uncomfortable and its difficult when patients have to wait many months to have that procedure done and we are hoping to be able to reduce those waiting times significantly.”

As part of rolling out the NHI in northern Belize, two poly-clinics will be refurbished; those are the clinic in San Narciso and the other is Xunox Clinic – both in the Corozal district.